The Freaks are freakin awesome!! a sort of small volcanic area (50 problems!?) with cool knobs and pockets and a good mix of fun, steep, low and high, easy to hard problems concentrated in one area a short 5-10 min walk from the highway on a nice trail. Look for it in the next editions of Lake Tahoe Bouldering and Northern California Bouldering by SUPERTOPO! - for now heres a few videos;

Caples has seen a bunch of rad new FA's this week! Here is the 20+ foot "Tower of Song" V3 It starts on an obvious sloping ledge with bomb feet in the scoop. Then a rad mantle to a 5.4 highball slab. THE DOWNCLIMB IS A 5.10 FREESOLO, OR BACK DOWN THE SLAB AND JUMP.

On the back of this boulder is another V3 FA called "Suzanne." It is a cool face, neat moves. This boulder is really cool and will have about 4 more amazing/harder very serious highball boulder problems of great aesthetics. It would be good to go there with many pads/spots, and maybe a rope, too. This is the biggest boulder at the tree/water line, near the four star V9 "Excalibur."

Next is "Shark fin Soup" V4. This problem felt like V6 to me, but Siemay and Josh insist so. It was fun, but only ** and a little shapr/thrutchy.

And up further into the rocky woods there are these classics: "Columbo" V0 (shown) and a cool V7 huge dyno called "Tornado" just to the left.

The prize of the day, however, was probably "The Marlin" V5***. Fun and athletic, this problem is a must do for moderate boulderers (5.12 crux.) Josh, Siemay and I all sent without too much trouble. We also met an old friend, Jay Dwyer out there randomly. Welcome to the list, Jay! Remember, anyone who wants to join the list, send their email along. Jay has much to add to our collective knowledge base and has promised some enticing tours.

Wow. What can I say. Climbing in Tahoe is really exploding. The numbers of world class boulders and problems not in any books is remarkable. Take for example "Dangerously Cheesey," an incredible boulder of perfect rock with four star lines on it sitting at 8200' near a perfect turqouis mountain lake. A preview of Heaven? Or maybe Heaven on Earth? Who knows. Many lines are done on this bad boy up at Crater Lake. Just 2 miles West of the Blue Lakes road turn-off. You need Hardcore 4 x 4 to get up there, or a long hike. Subarus won't make it... Bring a swimsuit for a noon-time swim. around 4 pm the temps require a fleece. See Jesse's blog for details:http://jessebonin.blogspot.com/2009/08/afternoon-delight.html ...and more photos.

Wow. I love Tahoe! We are all getting psyched for the season. There are so many projects in the whole grade spectrum it's insane! It seems Like Jesse and I have our work cut out for the fall to keep up with Jay and Frank and David and the other South Lake developers! TRY HARD! ...Speaking of which, I got some rad footage of Jesse climbing "Dangerously Cheesey" V11 second ascent and it looks sick. Maybe see you out at Eratica or Crater Lake, or Burnside, or the Ghosts, or... well... If I can get out of last minute wedding planning details. Don't tell Siemay I said that. -Noah as usual.

A new area, "The Freaks" has been discovered and developed by Frank Lucido, Jay Sell, Jesse Bonin, David Outcalt and others. I did 2 very cool highball First Ascents there just yesterday.

This is a volcanic area in the forest with very steep climbing not dissimilar to Hueco Tanks, TX.

Jesse has done two new incredible V12's there that he has named "Freakshow" and "Downtown Brown." Really amazing stuff. Thanks to Ben Broche for capturing some awesome point-and-shoot footage of the sick sends.

Went to Eratica with my best man Keita, Jay Sell and Frank Lucido Keita and Frank polished off the classic 4-star "Fuijiyama" V5 (Jay was hurt, but has flashed fujiyama in the past.) I did it again from the sit (V7.) We tried a hard classic project near to there but it spit us all off. V9 or 10ish.

Jay then showed us a new boulder that is amazing. Jay had put up several classic lines including the 3 star "adrenaline hoedown." He also let me add the sit-start to "Hoedown" and I made the "Lowdown hoedown" V9 adding a sweet POWER move.

...BUT... In classic Tahoe fashion, one of our local rock stars, Jesse Bonin, has informed me that he put up the low-start to the hoedown a while back, naming it "Master-Blaster." and he also thought V9. Classic. So now, the whole climb is called "Master Blaster." The other line, "Adrenaline Hoedown" V4 was Jay Sell's FA and is AWESOME. There are several more lines to do on the boulder including a hard megaproj. (v13/14ish.) I will top-rope clean another line on this boulder tomorrow evening. Icidentally, Jesse is just back from Rocklands where he made the 2nd ascent of Daniel Wood's "Fragile Steps" V13. This is Jesse's first official V13. Congratulate him if you see him. There are very few people in the world who can climb this hard.

Eratica is just past Kirkwood. It is a massive area with hundreds of boulders and tons of potential/established climbing. There are beautiful swimming holes and waterfalls, too. There are already a couple hundred problems of every sort. it is a nice area for summer since it is higher elevation like Burnside Lake. Still, you should bring bug spray.

The boulders are spread out, so a tour is best, but the area is North of the road, before Sliver Lake.

Here are some ERATICA videos with map coordinates:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8PCdeGLYOc a cool v9 i put up last year.
andhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CvV7Euh1Ys a cool v8 5 mins from the above problem.
and finally:http://www.vimeo.com/2675166 this is an amazing 10 minute video made by our very own Jason Hogan (on the email list) who is a very talented videographer. He did this short film about Jesse and I doing first ascents in Tahoe. He is also a local strongman having done great FA's, finding new areas, and having repeated local hard climbs including the rad "American Ganster" V9 up above Pie Shop at the Quality Boulder. He is also a sick skateboarder/snowboarder.

Leap of Faith: Possibly the sickest around. Jump start, steep
highball, pretty hard but extreemly comitting. I worked it for a while because you have to jump big just to get started... lots of pads required, incredible line.